Thursday, January 23, 2014

Homosexuality: Letter to a Fellow Believer

I wrote the following letter last year (2/2013) to a fellow Christian who was articulating a certain view on homosexual marriage and what the church's response should be.

E-----,

I read your blog post on homosexuality and I thought I would
offer some thoughts in response.I
enjoyed our conversation on this issue.It’s good to have good, critical interaction.So many today don’t want to engage in reasoned discourse so
I’m glad you are open to it.I’m
going to offer mostly critical comments on your post.I hope you see this as a sign of respect as I think your
ideas are worthy of rational analysis.Also, I’ll be mentioning some source materials in quotations and
footnotes.I’ve been reading and
writing on this issue of marriage and homosexuality for a number of months and I’ve
also spent some time engaging with others who take a view very similar to the
one you articulate in your blog post.I’m trying to assess the arguments as well as develop my articulation in
defense of what I think is the proper view on this important theological and
ethical issue.So I hope you will
indulge the length of this letter.And one more thing…I want to convince you that I’m right!

First, let me say that the position articulated in your post
was very courageous.You
uncompromisingly held to the sinfulness of homosexuality even knowing that this
would potentially draw disagreement and, perhaps, even anger from friends who
disagreed.You also, however,
affirm your support for same-sex marriage and this probably causes you to be
put in a position where you “draw fire” from both sides!I was also impressed with your strong
focus on Jesus and his gospel of grace which all of us sinners so desperately
need.

Let me begin my interaction with your thoughts. You write:

It’s time to accept something. We cannot, do
not, must not try to control the state of the world. We cannot force a moral
code or view onto others. We are not called to force the world to be “right”,
we are called to love others, and to share the gospel.

I don’t think
Christians who oppose homosexual “marriage” are trying to force anything. We are recognizing what has been
recognized for thousands of years in various cultural contexts—including
recognition in our own culture and enshrined in American law—that marriage is
between a man and a woman.
Recognizing this is not an attempt to “control the state of the world.” It is a desire to reflect the moral
realities latent within the world.
Seeking to stand for this time-honored and reasonable moral principle
ought not to be considered a form of “control.” This use of “force” seems to be prejudicial language.

You didn’t
use the language of “discrimination” but since some who hold positions similar
to yours do I think it’s important to recognize that any law about marriage will of
necessity discriminate against some other conception.[1]

Any legal system that distinguishes marriage
from other, non-marital forms of association, romantic or not, will justly
exclude some kinds of union from recognition.So before we can conclude that some marriage policy violates
the Equal Protection Clause, or any other moral or constitutional principle, we
have to determine what marriage actually is and why is should be
recognized legally in the first place.[2]

To enact any law is thus to discriminate. The question revolves around whether the discrimination is
lawful or unlawful. For the state
to uphold the definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman is
not unlawful discrimination. The
state is recognizing what the nature of marriage is. Those who favor same-sex marriage are arguing for a new and
fundamentally different understanding of marriage. It is no “disrespect” to a triangle to say that it is not a
circle. It is not “disrespect” to
homosexuals to argue that their relationship is not one that falls under the
definition of marriage.

You write:

What you are doing by denying homosexuals the right to marry is trying
to force the country under a law that only supports the moral code recognized
by (the majority of) Christians.

You, again, use the language of “force.” The irony in this is that this is what the promoters of
same-sex marriage are trying to do!
They are attempting to use the courts to by-pass the will of the people
so as to “force” their agenda upon the mass of Americans who disagree with
their views.

You write:

Also, homosexuality, particularly homosexuals in a committed, loving
relationship and wanting to publicly declare that sentiment to the world, is
NOT our biggest threat or enemy.

Are you
thinking of long-term effects or only of what effects take place
immediately? What if the large
scale acceptance of homosexuality is indicative of God’s judgment on a
culture—does that not constitute a significant threat? Of course, homosexuality may not be the
“biggest threat” but if marriage is redefined there will be profound negative
consequences for people. The
attempt to hold on to traditional view of marriage can and should be seen as an
attempt to “love our neighbor” in seeking the good of the culture. Consider these words of Maggie Gallagher:

Every human society has recognized that
there is something special about the union of husband and wife. Amid the
spectacular myriad of relationships that human beings create, marriage is
unique for a reason: these are the only unions that can create life and connect
those new young lives to the mother and father who made them.

For same-sex marriage advocates to make good
on their promise of marriage equality, the very idea that children need a mom
and dad must be delegitimized, rendered unspeakable in polite company. Same-sex
marriage represents an intellectual and moral repudiation of the idea that
marriage is grounded in any human reality outside of government, that
government is obligated to respect and protect. Marriage is becoming an idea at
the mercy of changing fashion, without deep roots in human nature.

And our current marriage culture is in
serious trouble. According to a new Brookings Institution report by two major family scholars (Brad Wilcox and
Andrew Cherlin), “the sexual disorder that marked the underclass in the sixties
has moved up the class ladder well into Middle America.”

The study discovered that by the late 2000s,
“moderately educated American women were more than seven times as likely to
bear a child outside of marriage as compared with their college-educated
peers.” While college-educated mothers showed a six-percent rate of nonmarital
births, the rate of nonmarital births for moderately educated mothers was
closer to the rate for mothers that do not have high school degrees—44 percent
and 54 percent, respectively.

Add to these statistics that 43 percent of
moderately educated young adults between ages 25 and 44 report that “marriage
has not worked out for most people they know,” while only 17 percent of highly
educated young adults report this.

All of these children in fatherless homes
are casualties of the deepest idea of the sexual revolution: human institutions
that limit sexual desire must be remade in order to achieve “maximum feasible
accommodation” with adult sexual desire.

Same-sex marriage will contribute further to
the erosion of our marriage culture by making it unacceptable to say that
children need married moms and dads. Our goal should not be to strengthen
Americans’ commitment to good romances, but to strengthen our commitment to
marriage as a social institution dedicated to bringing together male and female
so that children have mothers and fathers. In that institution, the government
clearly has a stake because it is so vital to the common good.

Far from being a neutral or pro-liberty
position, same-sex marriage amounts to a government takeover of an ancient and
honorable institution. Here, there are deep similarities philosophically
between the abortion and gay marriage movements. At the heart of each movement
is the belief that by re-jiggering words, elites change reality itself. A human
life can be redefined as a cluster of cells. Marriage can be remade to mean
whatever the government decides. Reality itself can be re-mastered to
accommodate sexual desires.

But in truth, government cannot create life,
and did not create marriage, and government has no business redefining either.[3]

The state is interested in the public good and should recognize that
which is morally right and beneficial to the larger society. Good laws reflect that which is morally
right and also contribute to creating a culture of goodness.

Law and culture exhibit a dynamic
relationship: Changes in one ultimately yield changes in the other, and
together law and culture structure the choices that individuals see as
available, acceptable, and choice-worthy. Given the clear benefits of marriage,
we believe that the state should not remain politically neutral, either in
procedure or outcome, between marriage and various alternative family
structures. Some have sought to redefine civil marriage as a private contract
between two individuals regardless of sex, others as a binding union of any
number of individuals, and still others as any kind of contractual arrangement
for any length of time that is agreeable to any number of consenting adult
parties. But in doing so a state would nec­essarily undermine the social norm
which encourages marriage as historically understood—i.e., the sexually
faithful union, intended for life, between one man and one woman, open to the
begetting and rearing of children. The public goods uniquely provided by
marriage are recognizable by reasonable persons, regardless of religious or
secular worldview, and thus provide compelling reasons for reinforcing the
existing marriage norm in law and public policy.[4]

You
bring up the issue of the ranking of sins. You write:

If we were going to rank sins by gravity (which we really shouldn’t,
because all are equal in the eyes of the Lord)…

This is a
common idea but it doesn’t seem to be true. Theologian Robert Gagnon has addressed this issue in great
detail in response to Alan Chambers who argues for this claim.[5] I will quote a few sections from Gagnon’s
essay (page numbers refer to the PDF version mention in footnote #5).

The fact that all sin is equal in one respect—any one sin can disqualify
one from the kingdom of God if one doesn’t receive Christ—does not infer that
all sin is equal in all respects—some sins provoke God to bring judgment upon
his people more than others.(p.
16)

Nobody actually lives in the belief that all sins are equally severe on
a moral plane.Indeed, it is often
those who argue in connection with homosexual practice that all sin is equal
that get particularly upset if one compares homosexual unions to (adult)
incest, bestiality, or pedophilia.They do so precisely because they regard incest, bestiality, and
pedophilia as “really bad” and don’t want homosexual behavior to be associated
with them.Such a reaction,
however, is already a concession to the obvious principle that some sins are
worse than others.(p. 18)

Gagnon goes
on to list a dozen scriptural texts that teach that some sins are worse than
others (see pages 18-20). Then on
pages 22-24 Gagnon demonstrates that homosexual practice is one of the more
severe sexual sins in scripture. I
would encourage you to read Gagnon’s arguments since his arguments call into
question any notion that homosexual practice is a “surface sin.”

I will stop
here.This is a big topic and it
has many facets.Again, I hope you
see my thoughts as an attempt to take seriously your arguments. I also hope we can keep the discussion
going.Our common bond is
ultimately in our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ.Let me know what you think—I look forward to hearing your
thoughts.

Sincerely,

Richard

[1] Discrimination is
not necessarily bad.We are
accustomed to thinking that any use of the word “discrimination” is bad due to
certain connotations but this is not the case.When a day-care facility refuses to hire someone who has
been convicted of child sexual molestation we consider this prudential
discrimination.Laws against theft
“discriminate” against those who feel that thievery is a valid pursuit.